If there is one recipe that reliably yields top-flight fishermen — in terms of basic human traits, talents, root skills — I’m reasonably certain that a hard-wired scientific bent is the key ingredient.

Me? I’m a humanities guy. A creative type. A science guy might base his angling strategy on months and years of careful observation conducted with absolute objectivity and a highly systematic approach to technique.

Five years ago, give or take, when the first rounds of known striper strongholds began to dry up in the Northeast — spots on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, the Elizabeths, Fishers Island, the Sluiceway in eastern Long Island Sound — most motivated stripermen knew the rumors about a diminished fishery but had seen no evidence thereof on “local” grounds they fished.

Outside the charter fleet, where rigid schedules and the need to catch on command force captains to lean on high-percentage methods, you won’t find many anglers singing the praises of wire-line or downrigger slow-trolling. Nor will you encounter many casual anglers with a powerful urge to spend their free time monkeying around with cumbersome ground tackle.

It was almost two years ago — Sunday, June 10, 2012, late afternoon — when I wrapped up my last professional turn on a charter boat deck. Through May that season I’d avoided making any of the usual commitments to full-time party- or charter-fishing gigs. I’d had one hell of a time wrapping my head around this sudden disruption of my normal seasonal rhythms — felt like the proverbial “man without a country,” a guy with no peg on which to hang his hat.

“You see ’em?” asked Capt. Russ Benn, pointing at the slick-calm surface. I almost jumped out of my deck boots at the sight of at least a dozen large shadows, one of them the size of a compact car, speeding this way and that, down deep where daylight faded. Nearer the surface, the electric-blue backs of the tiny skipjack tuna I’d been watching swarmed, picking off the silvery bits of butterfish chum as they slid down-drift out of the hull’s shadow-line.

Tim Coleman

Tim Coleman died May 3, in Weekapaug, R.I., doing what he loved to do best at that time of year: scouting the salt ponds and outer beaches for spring striped bass. He was an exceptional saltwater angler and a prolific writer. Thousands of readers lost an advocate and authentic storyteller for fishing in the Northeast, and anyone fortunate to have known Tim lost a good friend.